orld famous for his claims that bible math proved the rapture would come on May 22nd, and less famous for his claims a few days later that the rapture actually totally did happen, but it was all meta and conceptual and shit, Harold Camping has emerged from hiding this week to announce his boldest prediction yet: HD-DVD will be coming back on July 27th.

HD-DVD, the home video optical disc format launched by Japan’s Toshiba Corp in 2006, spent the entirety of its brief existence engaged in a bitter format war with rival Sony’s Blu-ray. The war came to a sudden, testicle-bashing end in January of 2008, when Warner Bros. announced it would end its policy of supporting both formats and throw its weight behind Blu-ray, because of that technology’s larger capacity and cooler name. Toshiba vowed to keep up the fight, while immediately stopping HD-DVD player production with its other hand and dispatching ninjas to WB headquarters with a surprise third hand that ended up being a fake made of paper mache. Soon after, the disc format folded like a delivery from Netflix.

"This is the real one," claimed Camping when questioned by the commune as to whether or not this was the real one. "I’ve read the bible twice and there it is, plain as day. Thine format begat by Toshiba shall rise once more, because The Jerk hath never come out on Blu-ray."

When this reporter pointed out that there was no fucking way it says "Toshiba" in the bible, Camping issued me a demerit for swearing and gave me a note to take to my parents. They are dead.

Skeptics of Camping’s revelation were not difficult to find.

"Bullshit," explained movie collector "Rowdy" Ronnie Pepper.

"Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit," he explained further.

And yet, Camping’s devout are convinced their man has it right again, for the first time.

"I totally knew it," boasted Philadelphia layabout Bob Rudolph. "All my friends were re-buying Black Rain on Blu-ray and I was like no way dude, HD-DVD is coming back. It’s in the bible and shit. With numbers."

"Wouldn’t that be awesome?" queried Quad Cities grass painter Mitchell Clung. "Imagine a world where you could buy any movie you wanted in high-def, as long as it was put out by Universal. It would be like heaven."

"The whole rapture fake-out was just a test to weed out the non-believers from the faithful," shouted Wisconsin housewife Mary Snupp, because this reporter had already started to walk across the street to interview someone who didn’t have cartoon cats on their doormat. "Now only the true of heart will know to start bidding on that Bee Movie HD-DVD on eBay."

When asked if Jesus would be returning with HD-DVD, Camping made a joke about The Passion of the Christ and then mumbled something about getting back to us after he’d learned how to do bible fractions.

fter thrilling America with exciting, action-packed tales in the hours after the May 1st raid that took Osama bin Laden’s life, White House officials have issued a series of statements gradually correcting and de-awesomeing their story as additional details have arisen from talking to people who actually know what the fuck happened.

"I may have gotten carried away in my initial statements about the raid," explained White House counterterrorism head John Brennan, source of many of the erroneous stories. "It turns out that bin Laden wasn’t actually killed by Matt Damon and Christian Bale, as I originally indicated, although that would have been awesome, but rather by faceless Special Forces goons you wouldn’t know if you were drinking right next to them in a bar. Sorry. Also, the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed during the raid was not brought down by an awe-inspiring salvo of RPG rockets as I first stated, I think I was thinking of that Ridley Scott movie on that one, but anyway, a five cent nut snapped and that piece of shit came down like a Chevy the day after your warranty expires. I know, I know. Reality is boring."

Brennan’s corrections were accompanied by noticeably fewer sound effects and animated hand gestures than his initial statements had been.

"I know I also said bin Laden was holed up in a mansion on a million-dollar compound like the drug kingpin in Commando, but yeah, it was actually a shithole. That place had like two windows and there were stray dogs all over the place. C’mon, it’s Pakistan, you guys should have called bullshit on that one yourselves. If I’d known you were all writing down everything I said I might have dialed back the pizazz a bit, you know? But whatever. Anyway, what else? Hold on, I’ve got a whole list here. Whooboy."

"Uhm, yeah we shot bin Laden’s son and his wife, but there was a guy down the street with a machine gun… pretty sure on that part… President Obama did not watch the raid live on TV, that photo I referenced was actually the president and his cabinet watching The Human Centipede and I think you’ll all agree that’s some sick shit… And no, we didn’t bury bin Laden at sea to prevent his gravesite from becoming a shrine for terrorists, actually this is kind of funny, but apparently when they were flying back over the sea, the guys in the chopper got in an argument about Lost and they wanted to re-create the scene in season 4 where the chopper’s running out of gas and Sawyer jumps out into the ocean to save everyone else… anyway, they said it was pretty awesome… uhm… Look, did you guys hear bin Laden had like 100 gigs of porn on his laptop? Holy shit, right? Let’s talk about that."

After original reports from White House officials indicated that bin Laden was shot while charging Navy SEALs with a blazing Uzi sub-machinegun in each hand, using his own wife as a human shield, this story was later amended to remove the wife and arm Bin Laden with a sack of poisonous vipers instead. After several subsequent corrections, the sack of vipers became a little girly derringer pistol, then stack of tax audit paperwork, and finally a really snotty Kleenex. Later in the week, the story was further amended when White House officials admitted that bin Laden was actually unarmed and in his pajamas at the time of the killing, and may or may not have been playing with a newborn kitten. Just before press time, the story was again corrected to indicate that bin Laden died of a head cold in 2003.

Good news, commune fans: You exist! I know, I’d had my doubts as well. But the successful relaunch of the commune proves it: I can barely walk down the street now without being mobbed by commune fans. Maybe "mobbed" is the wrong word, commune fans tend to be of the solitary sort, ungroomed and not always masters of the social arts or their own bodily functions. But boy are they out there, and boy do they want me to pay them to wash my windshield. Which is indeed a strange request when I’m traveling to my destination on foot, but that’s commune fans for you. Irreverent to the last.

These are the salad days, my friends, and not just because I’ve been eating a lot of salads to be able to afford sending Raoul Dunkin jet setting around the country to cover the latest and greatest in the world of news. Thankfully that hasn’t been quite as expensive as you might imagine, since during his last two years in the employ of the original commune, Raoul was paid exclusively in frequent flier miles. Apparently this was a common practice back then, as I’m told Omar Bricks was paid entirely in Camel cash and Boris Utzov was paid in camel shit. I shudder to think of what Boris was doing with all that camel shit, though I’ve heard rumors he used most of it to erect a camel shit statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of Central Park. As the story goes, this understandably upset the natives, but Boris claimed it was actually a likeness of his cousin Boguslaw Sadowski, which no one could argue with because they couldn’t understand what he was saying.

But back to why these are the salad days. Running the commune out of my mother’s house is like a dream come true. It’s an impressive scene I assure you… I wish you could see it. I mean that literally, I wish I had a camera so I could take pictures and post them to the site. That’s a subtle hint for any of you commune fans doing some early Christmas shopping. We could also use a computer, because running down to Kinko’s to upload new articles to the site is becoming a serious pain in both of my balls. News doesn’t always break during Kinko’s business hours, as the old journalism saying goes.

But I assure you it’s quite a scene. When Raoul isn’t globetrotting to bring you the poop most in need of scooping, he’s here, bitching that I don’t even have a computer. But I’m not even here myself, because I’m down at the Safeway checking for new Roland McShyster reviews or down at the library scouring back issues of old porno mags for new-to-us Rok Finger columns. In a side note, I am truly surprised at just how well stocked our local library is when it comes to pornography. If more people knew this I think libraries would be a lot more popular.

But that’s not all! the commune family is expanding like Paris Hilton’s belly after she eats a paperclip. I’m proud to announce that commune favorites Griswald Dreck and Ivan Nacutchacokov have both rejoined the flock, and not a moment too soon! I mean, it’s not the kind of operation someone could join too soon. I suppose they could have joined us before the original commune building burnt to the ground, that would have been kind of strange and maybe too soon, but any point after that was pretty much ideal for us.

Anyway, you’ll never guess where I found Mr. Dreck. A few weeks ago I was eating some garlic ice cream and let me tell you, it left a pretty funky taste in my mouth. So I reached for a delicious hunk of Bazooka bubble gum to tame that garlicy tongue beast and as I was happily chewing away, eager to lose myself in the adventures of Bazooka Joe and his dog, Walkie Talkie, I was instead treated to a byzantine comic about the history of penile implants. Gobsmacked as I was, I still had enough blood flowing to my brain to instantly recognize this as the work of none other than commune answerman Griswald Dreck. I dialed the Bazooka bubble gum emergency hotline just as fast as my fingers would carry me, and after navigating through a bewildering forest of options (If you’re choking on bubble gum right now, press or say "I’m choking on bubble gum right now") I was eventually put in touch with a Human Resources guru. He informed me that Dreck had been fired from his post for drawing comics that weren’t about Bazooka Joe at all, or that covered the origins of things like pencil sharpeners or democracy, or that were too densely packed onto the wrapper to be legible, or, usually, all of the above. Thankfully, they had Dreck’s home address due to him sending them regular letters explaining how their "New Adventures of Bazooka Joe" wrappers weren’t canon and contained factual errors about eye patches. Before long I was in touch with Mr. Dreck himself, and it didn’t take much convincing to get him to travel to Vermont and rejoin the team, since he’d been scraping together a living on the brutal underground bar trivia circuit and was ready for a change.

It was some time shortly after that when I discovered that Ivan Nacutchacokov had been living in my basement the entire time since the original commune folded. This was awkward at first to discover, but it worked out fine since it meant Ivan had to make less of a transition to living in my basement than the others. I’m not sure how he feels about Dunkin and Dreck invading his turf, but there haven’t been any knife fights or anything yet. Ivan agreed to rejoin the commune on the condition that we don’t tell his ex-wife Ivana Folger-Balzac where he is. The truth is she’d already been here looking for him, months ago, but at the time I had no idea he was in the basement so I imagine I provided pretty good ignorant cover. Truth be told I might have cracked when she started hitting me with her car door if I’d actually known he was down there.

And so we’re off. Keep those tips coming, commune fans and assorted law enforcement personnel nationwide. You’ve made my wish come true, and I didn’t even have to get cancer to make it happen. Emil Zender: 1, Make a Wish Kids: 0, for those keeping score at home.

Zincerely,
Emil Zender

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